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Sympathizing with a Psychopath

by Nancy Kman,posted Feb 13 2013 10:48AM

There was a time when I was obsessed with reading about serial killers. I always wanted to know what makes them tick. When something horrible happens, we’d like to think that it is explainable. Unfortunately, when it comes to psychopaths, it’s hard to get an answer.

From the looks of it, former LAPD cop Christopher Dorner was a psychopath. He wasn’t a serial killer; he’s what’s known as a spree killer. Psychopath and sociopath are sometimes intertwined and there’s disagreement as to what differentiates the two. Having read Dorner’s so called manifesto, I find him to be the classical case of psychopathy. Mary Ellen O’Toole was an FBI profiler who specialized in this. She talked about “injustice collectors”. These are people who hold on to things that happened to them that they believe to be unjust. They usually make a mountain out of a mole hill. Dorner’s manifesto was filled with these. He also thought of himself in a grandiose fashion. He lashed out at the lack of empathy from the leader of the NRA for the school kids in Newtown, while showing no empathy for the innocent couple he killed because the woman was the daughter of a man he felt ‘wronged him’.

As disturbing as Dorner is, I find it incredibly unbelievable that there are people who sympathize with him. Psychopaths are imitators. They don’t feel for anyone. They mimic emotions. They are charming; they tell you what you want to hear. Christopher Dorner was not a nice, normal guy who went nuts after something happened to him. He was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. If it wasn’t the LAPD, something else would have triggered his murderous rage.